About

Brookhurst: Full-Length Album "Heartstrings"

$1,172

pledged of $1,000 goal

48

backers

It's been four years since our debut album and we think it's time to release some new music!

HEY! We’re Brookhurst, three friends from California who randomly started a punk/pop/rock band back in 2010 for the sole purpose of getting together to make some fun loud noises on occasion. (We knew this was a way better plan than NOT getting together to make some fun loud noises on occasion, right?! We thought so!)

With regular “9-to-5 adult” lives and the usual bills to pay ever-present, we — Steven Neufeld (guitar & vocals), Garrett Baldwin (bass, backup vocals), and Joe Herrera (drums) — really craved that precious chance to band together a few weekends a month to fire up the amps, tune up the drums, throw some song ideas into the rehearsal room pot, and utilize our semi-pro skills as musicians who’ve been rocking for most of our lives in different bands—a creative outlet, if you will, and a great excuse to break a sweat and accomplish some artistry in this fleeting existence we all adhere to as human beings.

Brookhurst pre-production rehearsal in Hollywood, CA

We could go into details about all the bands we’ve played in before (or still do!), but the list of random projects might bore some, so we’ll just summarize the story behind this Kickstarter project the shortest way possible:

Back in 2015...

We enlisted the help of our good friend Danny Balistocky (Rev 9 Recording Studios) to help record, engineer and produce the “old” album titled Brookhurst. 15 songs, recorded rough and raw, and thrown out into the world, with little response and virtually no marketing. There it sits, like a bump on a log.

We kept getting together to rehearse for years after that debut record was released and marched forward into the rock and roll night, creating more songs and more songs, getting tighter and more proud of the fact that we were finally honing in and crafting our sound and sharpening our sonic swords.

This leads us to 2018...

...the year we once again asked Danny B. to help us create the obviously better, brighter, and bigger sounding record we always wanted to put out.

We spent way more time getting naturally epic drum tones, tuning our guitars with a fine-tooth comb, and Steven wrote lyrics that actually mattered to him... and hopefully will resonate with potential listeners of the world (you!) and the few awesome (and patient) devoted fans this band may have righteously collected over the decade.

The result is something we’re insanely proud of: Heartstrings, our second full-length album withten quality poppy punk rock tracks; mostly fast, some mid-tempo knee-slappers, and a ballad or two for good measure. All of the tunes are overtly melodic, jam-packed with singable harmonies, colorful instrumentation, and will hopefully be as enjoyable to our listeners as they were to write and record.

In this day and age, we bands do it all.

Labels are for 1996. We pay to play in every sense of the word. We self-funded this record: all the studio session time with Danny in Hollywood, all the mixing he painstakingly did for us, all the back-and-forth notes and re-adjustments of track levels here and there. We also took a confident leap and sent the songs off to the legendary Blasting Room for a killer mastering (via Jason Livermore), which really made the tunes shine and helped the record’s sound go from 100% to 110%, in our opinion.

We also were honored to have some badass cover artwork done by legendary punk scene artist SBÄM ...take a look at the artwork below. But it all came at a cost to us. We’re the furthest thing from rich rock stars and all have jobs, families, and regular lives. Which is part of why we are humbly asking for the help of a few of our friends and noble fans to pitch in to help us get this sophomore release out into the world; to help get its feet off the ground by launching it into the atmosphere with the momentum we feel it truly deserves as a labor of musical love, years in the making!

Thanks for reading this novel. Every dollar helps us reach our goal, and we truly thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts!

Risks and challenges

Kickstarter is all or nothing, but here's the thing: We're going to release this album no matter what. We want people to hear it. We're not backed by a label and certainly don't have a ton of money laying around and funded the recording and mastering of this album with our hard-earned money.

The funds from this project will help us get CDs of this album, which we consider our best work yet. Some may say CDs are a thing of the past, but we really want to have a physical product in hand and hope you do too. The money may also make it possible for us to offer the record on VINYL in the future, which would be super rad!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $300 or more
About $300

Custom Song

All of the above PLUS: Brookhurst's Steven Neufeld will write & record a song for you, including music, lyrics, production, mixing/mastering. The song can be a cover, a rendition of an original, a song YOU wrote, or a song Steven writes for you.. with you in mind.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $700 or more
About $700

Steven's Fender Mustang

Your chance to own a piece of Brookhurst history! Score Steven’s personal silver sparkle Fender Mustang electric guitar (with P-90 pickups) used for 90% of the guitar tracking during the “Heartstrings” recording sessions in Hollywood. It comes with a Fender hardshell case, nylon strap, dunlop picks, and is in like-new condition. (Shipping cost: $50 in the US, $100 Rest of World)